She told me, pointing to a blue and orange set. It wasn’t exactly a color scheme that I appreciated, nor was it especially fancy for yom tov, but having shlepped out and waited this long, I wasn’t ready to head home without something to show for my time.

One passage in this week’s sedrah shows how differences in interpretation can lead to, or flow from, profound differences in culture. Ironically, the subject concerned – abortion – remains deeply contentious to this day.

Question: At work, people sometimes argue that the Torah doesn’t regard women highly, only mentioning them in passing, almost begrudgingly at times. They cite, for example, the Torah’s treatment of Serach bat Asher and Yocheved bat Levi. I would appreciate very much if you could provide me with “ammunition” to refute them.
Mrs. C. Grosz

By delegating the judicial function downward, Moses would bring ordinary people – with no special prophetic or legal gifts – into the seats of judgment. Precisely because they lacked Moses’s intuitive knowledge of law and justice, they were able to propose equitable solutions.

Yitro confronts us for the first time with a new phenomenon: to be a Jew by choice. By doing so, he presents all Jews with a major challenge: how to become a Jew by choice even when one has been born into the fold.

I finished reading that the Israeli chief rabbinate invalidating numerous conversions, opened the weekly portion, and enjoyed a hearty chuckle when I remembered that the portion of Revelation and the Ten Statements is named for a convert, a failed one, Yitro. Things sure have changed.